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Write like you talk

paulgraham.com

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Re: Write like you talk

#51

Post by philh »

_delirium wrote: post #36
joslin01 wrote: post #6

It just depends upon your aims. If you're trying to convey an idea in hopes of transferring knowledge then yes -- write like you would talk to ease the others' cognitive load. If you're a fantasy writer, it would get pretty drab pretty fast if you spoke to me like how most people speak to me. In fact, it'd be downright boring if you structured all dialogue between characters in such a manner. You need the pomp to mak…

> If you're trying to convey an idea in hopes of transferring knowledge then yes -- write like you would talk to ease the others' cognitive load. Even for transferring knowledge, it depends a lot on what knowledge you're trying to transfer, and to whom. In scientific writing, the more pop-science the goal of the article, the more conversational the style should be, and vice-versa. In a paper by someone in my field wr…

> "Consider three whole numbers, such that the sum of the square of the first two equals the third"

I wouldn't say that in conversation. I'd say something like: "consider three integers, with a squared plus b squared equals c".

And in writing, I'd go for something like: "consider a, b, c ∈ ℤ, such that a² + b² = c". Which isn't far off.

Re: Write like you talk

#52

Post by biswaroop »

stupidcar wrote: post #38

If you've ever read a verbatim transcript of an interview or conversation, you'll know that actual speech is anything but clear. When talking off the cuff, even the most clear minded people tend to ramble, um and ahh, double back, talk across each other, and jump between points and subjects. When listening to someone in person, our brains seem to edit what they say on the fly to make it comprehendible, focusing on th…

> brains seem to edit

I'd love to hear from NLP experts on speech vs writing from a machine's perspective.

> not a representation of natural communication so much as an idealised version

Written language lacks stresses and intonation. I wonder if the written dialect attempts to fill in this gap, and whether tonal languages idealize their speech differently.

> conversational tone can improve formal writing about complex topics

Feynman's lectures are a nice instance of this.

Re: Write like you talk

#54

Post by aWidebrant »

"Write like you talk" is bad advice twice: It encourages rambling, which - unlike in a conversation - the reader has no means to interrupt, and it offers no clear rules to follow while writing. Orwell's six[1] are, in my experience, much more useful:

  (i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which
      you are used to seeing in print.

  (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

  (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

  (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

  (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon
      word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

  (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright
       barbarous.
[1] https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Re: Write like you talk

#55

Post by diqu »

cousin_it wrote: post #48
stupidcar wrote: post #38

If you've ever read a verbatim transcript of an interview or conversation, you'll know that actual speech is anything but clear. When talking off the cuff, even the most clear minded people tend to ramble, um and ahh, double back, talk across each other, and jump between points and subjects. When listening to someone in person, our brains seem to edit what they say on the fly to make it comprehendible, focusing on th…

So, "write like you want to talk"?

I think this would be sound advice in this context. "Write like you see yourself talking when imagining your speech".

Re: Write like you talk

#56

Post by kanzure »

stupidcar wrote: post #38

If you've ever read a verbatim transcript of an interview or conversation, you'll know that actual speech is anything but clear. When talking off the cuff, even the most clear minded people tend to ramble, um and ahh, double back, talk across each other, and jump between points and subjects. When listening to someone in person, our brains seem to edit what they say on the fly to make it comprehendible, focusing on th…

> If you've ever read a verbatim transcript of an interview or conversation, you'll know that actual speech is anything but clear

When I go to conferences and sit in the audience, I type transcripts in real-time. I somewhat agree with you, but I have some other evidence that I don't know what to do with:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/

I have found that some people are amazingly well spoken. Absurdly well spoken, as if they specifically chose words so that I could transcribe and type them more easily. Matt Corallo has been really easy to type:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/mit-bitcoin-expo-2015/matt...

For comparison, gmaxwell is more difficult to transcribe because of compressed deeply parenthetical spike bursts:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/gmaxwell-bitcoin-selection...

and I remember jgarzik gave me lots of trouble recently during his talk:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/issues-impa...

For more comparison, here was an impromptu sit-down session with a few (high-energy) friends:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/snarks/

Great results abound when making authoritative statements. I find that I sound the most elegant for hours after I am done with some 10 hour high-concentration programming session. I attribute this to paying more attention to the purpose of communication, whether to transfer knowledge or achieve some other goal, and that good writing/speech is very similar to good programming.

And I have low tolerance for communication when the epistemology is all wrong....

Re: Write like you talk

#57

Post by alecdbrooks »

This is good advice, but I disagree with his example. The entire paragraph reads[0]:

>The Upper Palaeolithic cave art of Europe was a tradition that lasted for perhaps 20,000 years and it will always be rightly described as primitive. But it is upon those anonymous artists' shoulders — giants' shoulders — that later masters like Picasso were able to stand. The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: 'After Altamira, all is decadence.'

Sure, for maximum clarity, Neil Oliver could have written more like he talks. But this paragraph is clear enough and written in an appealing style. It might not be Paul Graham's favorite style, but that doesn't make it bad writing.

I also think the sentence he picked is particularly unconversational, which is misleading for two reasons. One, it makes Oliver's style sound more opaque and formal than it actually is. Two, even in a more conversational style than Oliver's, you're occasionally going to include something that's a step more formal.

I think Graham knows this, albeit unconsciously. Would he really say "Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas" in a conversation? Probably not, but it reasonably passed his read aloud test because it's a good distillation of his point.

[0]: https://books.google.com/books?id=1Uk0AgAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...

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